Japanese military given instructions on UFOs

<p>Taro Kono, the country's minister for defence, issues the instruction following the US department of defence founding its Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.</p><p>While the popular imagination has been excited by UFOs, the military takes UAPs - as they are formally known - very seriously.</p><p>The risk for security officials is that the spotted aircraft are something which an untrained observer is unable to identify, but which could be a foreign incursion into domestic airspace.</p><p>But sometimes the UAPs appear to be even more mysterious.</p><p>Earlier this year the <strong><a href="https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Releases/Release/Article/2314065/establishment-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force/" target="_blank">Pentagon declassified three videos</a></strong> of strange elliptical objects racing across the sky.</p><p>The black and white videos were <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/leaked-classified-ufo-footage-is-real-us-navy-confirms-11813737" target="_blank"><strong>recorded by Navy pilots</strong></a> - one in November 2004 and two in January 2015, according to the US Department of Defence.</p><p>One of the clips shows a dark circular object flying in front of a jet, another shows a small object speeding over land and the third shows a circular object racing and then appearing to slow down as it approaches the camera.</p><p>Mr Kono cited these videos and explained that while the Japanese defence force pilots are not believed to have ever encountered a UAP, his intention wast to develop a procedure in case such an encounter ever took place.</p><p>It is not the first time that members of the Japanese government have broached the topic.</p> <p>The defence ministry previously stated in 2015 that it had <strong><a href="https://news.sky.com/story/japans-defence-chief-reveals-ufo-details-10365218" target="_blank">never encountered alien spacecraft</a></strong> although the country's then chief cabinet secretary, Nobutaka Machimura, said: "Personally, I absolutely believe they exist."</p><p>Then-defence minister Shigeru Ishiba added that in his personal opinion there were "no grounds" to deny that there are UFOs controlled by alien life-forms, although this was not the official government position.</p><p>Celebrities fascinated by UFOs include rock star Tom DeLonge, who <strong><a href="https://news.sky.com/story/tom-delonge-on-ufo-research-i-wouldnt-have-left-blink-182-for-something-pie-in-the-sky-12061013" target="_blank">spoke to Sky News about his work</a></strong> on the subject earlier this month, saying he would not have put music on the backburner just "to chase monsters and ghosts".</p> <p>Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the lunar module pilot for Apollo 14, publicly stated he was personally 90% sure that many reports of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, "belong to visitors from other planets".</p><p>He suggested that he had met officials from foreign countries who had personal encounters with alien beings, and suggested that governments were covering up such contacts.</p><p>That said, he always maintained that he had never seen a UFO, and that he had never been threatened regarding those claims. He also said that UFOs being covered up was his own personal speculation.</p>